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The CR40 ships as a retail box only and inside you’ll find a quick installation guide, a copy of Nero OEM Suite, an audio cable and a set of mounting screws. Unfortunately there’s no IDE cable included, but it’s worth remembering that this drive is designed to be used with a Shuttle XPC, which will have a pre-routed IDE cable just waiting for it.

Price wise, the CR40 is far from cheap considering its specs. At £40 including VAT, it’s a lot more than the award winning NEC ND-4550A, but to be fair the NEC price is for a bare drive and not a retail box. But I don’t think that the CR40 should be judged on its specification alone, or even its performance – this is a drive aimed at people that want their XPC small form factor boxes to look as good as they can, and in this respect the CR40 does a great job.

Verdict

The CR40 is a very specialist DVD writer. If you’ve got a silver or black Shuttle XPC, you really want one of these drives. The black looks good and complements the black XPC well, but the silver version seen here really does look superb in a silver XPC chassis. The CR40 isn’t the best featured, fastest or cheapest drive around, but if I was building an XPC system, I’d probably still go for one of these. If however I was building any other kind of PC, I’d go for the NEC.

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